What his constituents hardest hit by Ike probably didn’t know at that time is that last year, Jackson single-handedly killed legislation that would have helped shore-up Texas’ windstorm insurance program and protect the nearly quarter of a million Texans that are insured by the program:

“We have to figure out how to deal with this,” added Smithee, chairman of the House Insurance Committee and the author of last year’s windstorm bill that was approved overwhelmingly in the lower chamber but was killed by Sen. Mike Jackson, R-La Porte (in the coastal area) in the final hours of the 140-day session…. Jackson said that although he killed Smithee’s bill with the threat of a filibuster because he considered it unfair to his constituents, the two lawmakers were working to address those concerns. Jackson said he was likely to support Smithee’s bill next session.

Thanks to Jackson’s decision to kill the windstorm insurance legislation, not only are the program’s quarter million insured Texans at risk, but so are all Texas taxpayers–given that the state is on the hook for every penny of windstorm insurance payouts:

“We have lived on borrowed time,” said Isett who, as chairman of the Sunset Advisory Commission, the 12-member legislative panel that oversees all state government agencies, could influence the passage of such legislation. Typically, a state agency, board or commission is reviewed every 12 years, and the Texas Department of Insurance is in the current two-year cycle.

“We’ve got to fix windstorm,” Isett said. “Our exposure is too big.”

[...]

The number of policy holders insured by the state-funded Texas Windstorm Insurance Association, or TWIA, increased from 68,756 in 2001 to 224,452 at the end of July, and the total exposure in total claims was $66.1 billion, Peacock said.

“It’s a burden” for the state, he said.

Let’s hope that Toxic Mike Jackson’s constituents remember this come election day.

The Children’s Defense Fund of the Rio Grande Valley is alarmed at a recent spike in the number of children being lost from the rolls of the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

The latest figures from the Department of State Health Services were dissected at a meeting of the Children’s Health Coalition on Wednesday.

While members of the CHC expressed thanks to H-E-B for partnering with the group for a Back-to-School CHIP enrollment drive, they were unhappy with the high number of children being “disenrolled” from the popular health insurance program.

“Up until March of this year, things were going great. We had minimal disenrollments,” explained Luisa Saenz, executive director of the Children’s Defense Fund-RGV. “Now, however, the disenrollments have taken a jump again and we don’t know why.”

The figures don’t lie, Saenz said. For the current month, “disenrollments” in the four-county Valley area stand at 2,925. Last month it was 1,093. The month before that it was 1,064. The same pattern can be seen across the state. For the current month, “disenrollments” in Texas stand at 38,210. Last month it was 10,702. The month before that it was 11,410.

“What is of grave concern is that if the disenrollment rate continues at the September level, no matter how hard we try and how many new applications we send in, we will not be making the headway we would like to see,” Saenz said. “We have to remember we still have well over 60,000 uninsured children in the Valley alone. No matter how you look at the numbers, the battle is still there.”

[...]

“There’s been a huge drop in Children’s Medicaid also,” Saenz said. “Over the past year, enrollment in Children’s Medicaid in the Valley has dropped by 34,334. Statewide, in September 2007 we had just over two million children on Medicaid. That has dropped to 1.7 million. So, it cannot be that.”

Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, gave the Guardian her analysis.

“We had a period, from March through August, where the CHIP disenrollments were very low statewide,” Goodman said. “That’s because we were seeing the effect of the change from a six-month enrollment period to a 12-month period. Very few families, only those at the highest end of the income range, had to renew during that period.”

Goodman said now is the time when more families have to go through the renewal process each month. For example, families who enrolled in September 2007, when the state changed to 12 months of coverage, came up for renewal in September 2008.

“During the renewal process, we’ll find that some families no longer qualify for CHIP. If their income is lower, we enroll the children in Medicaid. And some families just don’t send back the renewal form. We aim a lot of our outreach at those families,” Goodman said.

I guess I’m a little confused. I thought that HB 109, passed by the 80th Texas Legislature, at minimum, fixed the parts of the “permanent wall” that required such frequent re-enrollment and did some tweaking with the asset tests.

Texas, meanwhile, keeps purring along. The economy is slowing, to be sure, and corporate layoffs are rising, but the state remains in positive territory by most measures. Even construction employment, down 5.2 percent nationwide in the past year, was up 3.6 percent here.

“We’re feeling an impact from the slowdown, but in economics, everything is relative,” says Cheryl Abbot, regional economist with the Dallas office of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The state is holding up especially well compared with the country at large, and so far, North Texas is looking good, too. The Fort Worth-Arlington area added jobs in every category in the past 12 months, even an additional 200 in manufacturing — one sector that’s generally declined everywhere.

Credit three factors for Texas’ (relatively) good fortune:

The housing market has held up better than in much of the country, and as a result, consumer confidence hasn’t crashed to the same depths. That’s one explanation for why retail sales rose 5.6 percent in Texas in the past year, at least three times higher than nationwide.

The energy industry is booming, riding the wave of sky-high oil and gas prices. That’s producing scores of new jobs in Texas and abroad, and bonus checks for landowners in the Barnett Shale and elsewhere. The Texas rig count reached 931 in June, the highest level since 1984, reports the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Texas exports are on a tear, helped by the falling dollar and strong demand for chemicals. The currency drop has helped boost exports nationwide, but Texas exports grew 7.2 percent in April, compared with a 3.3 percent increase for the nation, the Dallas Fed reports.

These trends spill over to the broader economy, insulating Texas workers from some of the forces now squeezing employers. In professional and business services, for example, the nation barely added any jobs in the past year. But Texas companies added 64,500 employees in that category, a 5 percent increase.

Even the financial services business is doing OK here. Those firms have been in a tailspin, after the meltdown in subprime loans and a sharp drop in home sales. The sector accounted for more than 85,000 announced layoffs so far this year, the most in the monthly survey by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago placement firm.

But Texas added 5,900 jobs in financial activities in the past 12 months, with 4,100 added in Dallas-Fort Worth alone.

Of course, the outlook for the future isn’t rosy in spite of the Texas economy not being totally in the dumps at this moment:

“Texas is going to feel the effects of the downturn, just like other states,” says John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “But when people lose jobs, they’ll be able to find something else a lot easier — and maybe without having to move and sell their house.”

I dispute that it will be easier for Texans to find jobs when the economy in Texas finally does its own spectacular meltdown (admittedly, the spectacular meltdown could be avoided with a Democratic president in the White House and new economic policies, but we’ll see), but that’s not the issue that has my curiosity piqued at the moment.

I wonder what impact the economic difficulties will have on the state’s fiscal standing when the 81st Texas Legislature convenes next January.

While higher petrochemical prices only add to the state’s bottom line, unemployment and business closings take away from the bottom line and actually create a greater fiscal burden for the state.

Business closings, obviously, will result in less taxes paid to the state (franchise taxes, etc.). In addition, it will result in less sales tax revenue. Sales tax revenue, of course, funds a pretty significant chunk of the state’s budget.

Higher unemployment, of course, will have a myriad of effects on the state. First, it means less sales tax revenue for the state because the unemployed have less to spend their money on. It could mean less property tax revenue for local governments as the unemployed may not be able to meet their property tax payments. Too, it will mean more state expenditures as families that once had insurance through their jobs find themselves on the wrong side of the economy and end up needing more state services such as food stamps, CHIP, and other health and human services provided by the state.

Of course, it depends upon exactly how bad the economy gets exactly how bad things will be for the 81st Texas Legislature when it comes time to pass a budget. Will social services been in need of a significant influx of new funding as a result of a lot of unemployed, newly impoverished Texans–and will the state have the money to pay for it?

The weak economy and the problems it could pose for the 81st Legislature is yet another reason we need a strong Democratic majority in the Texas House of Representatives. We all saw what happened in 2003 when the state–facing a decicit–balanced the budget on the backs of poor and middle class Texans. We could see a repeat of that (although you’d think Republicans would be smarter than that by now) if Republicans continue to hold on to the Texas Legislature. Or, if Democrats are in office, we may see more sound fiscal policy that doesn’t balance the budget on the backs of poor Texans.

Only time will tell.

“When I made the decision to author House Bill 8, also known as Jessica’s Law, I did so with the single purpose of making Texas safer for our children, and more dangerous for their predators.  While the majority of the provisions of House Bill 8 will not be affected by today’s ruling, I believe that the Supreme Court has somewhat diluted our effort as a state to provide our children with the strongest possible protection by providing the strongest possible punishment to those who would do them harm.

That’s rather interesting. I don’t think the Court diluted the state’s efforts at all. I think the Legislature should have had the wisdom not to understand that the death penalty wasn’t an appropriate punishment for this offense, as bad as the offense is.

Senator Royce West (D-Dallas), Senator Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio), and Representative Scott Hochberg (D-Houston) issued the following joint statement today, urging Commissioner Scott to drop dropout vouchers from the proposed rule:

As legislators, we are deeply concerned with the new dropout recovery pilot program. As Commissioner Scott is certainly aware, we each served on the conference committee for HB2237, which authorized these pilot programs, which passed both the House and Senate with only one nay vote. Rarely do we see such consensus surrounding legislation. Clearly, the will of the legislature to help address dropout rates in Texas is strong.

Equally strong however, is our decade-long stance against the use of taxpayer funds to pay private school tuition. Commissioner Scott’s proposed rule directly contradicts the will of the 80th Texas Legislature, which refused to pass any measure that would allow tax dollars to be used to pay tuition at private and religious schools. Whether Commissioner Scott chooses to call the proposal to divert public funds to private schools vouchers or not, the Legislature has repeatedly made it clear that public tax dollars should be used to fund public schools.

We hope that Commissioner Scott, who chose not to attend today’s hearing on this proposed rule, and to our knowledge, did not ask members of the Texas House and Senate about their intent with respect to this program, will drop vouchers from the proposed dropout recovery program. And we hope that our state’s Education Agency will work along with its Texas Legislature to help our public schools implement effective and innovative programs to reduce dropout rates across our state.

How Scott decided that vouchers should be part of the equation is a bit mind-numbing in and of itself. If you take a careful examination of the intent of the bill itself, from the House Research Organization, you see nothing about vouchers:

The board would have the authority to develop and award grants, administer programs, and establish eligibility and application criteria for grants. The board would be required to adopt a strategic plan to address high school reform, dropout prevention, and the preparation of students for postsecondary coursework or employment. The board would have rulemaking authority and be able to use funds appropriated for the implementation of the bill.

The board could provide grants in support of innovative research-based high school improvement programs to enhance education practices. It could develop professional development activities for teachers and administrators for training related to implementing curriculum and instruction and standards and expectations for college readiness. The board would coordinate with private foundations that have made investments for the improvement of high schools in Texas.

The bill would establish a number of new pilot programs, including a pilot program to provide grants to school districts to fund student club activities for students at risk of dropping out of school; a pilot program to implement a local collaborative dropout reduction grant program; an intensive technology-based academic intervention pilot program; and a pilot program to award grants to participating campuses to provide intensive academic summer programs to promote college and workforce readiness to at-risk students.

d

From the Axis of IDiocy’s joint press release:

State Representatives Betty Brown, Leo Berman, Dwayne Bohac and Debbie Riddle said today that they were pleased with the court’s decision and hoped that it would bolster support for similar legislation which passed the Texas House but failed in the Senate.

“We would again like to reaffirm our support for legislation that passed through the Texas House of Representatives that would have strengthened voter confidence and helped guarantee the integrity of Texas’ electoral process.

“Today’s 6-3 decision by the court shows that the policies proposed in House Bill 218 and similar legislation are consistent with the US Constitution and represent our intent to strengthen and protect our election system for all voters. It is our hope that in the 2009 session the Texas Senate will be able to follow suit and join with the House to pass this important and needed law.”

How amusing it is that the Axis of IDiocy believe that the Crawford decision–which is the worst civil rights decision by the court since Dred Scott–is worthy of praise, yet when the Courts uphold a woman’s right to choose is the work of “activist judges.”

Clearly, Berman, Brown, Riddle, and Bohac–each of whose record of legislative ‘accomplishment’ is about as helpful to Texas as size 44-double-D’s on a boar–want to make this their new clarion call. Whether the activist-right-wing Supreme Court says so or not, Voter ID will disenfranchise millions of Texans. It simply isn’t the Texas way and, further, there is no evidence that it is needed in this state.

It is just a divisive issue for the Axis of IDiocy to campaign on to the immigrant-hating Republicans at the local country club.

Of course, there is debate among legislators who fought over the bill over whether or not the 15-student rule is mandatory or not:

But Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott has called on Abbott to referee one of the bill’s most contentious points: Are public high schools required to offer a Bible course if at least 15 students request it?

The bill’s author, Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, and Sen. Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, who carried the legislation in the Senate, emphatically contend it was intended to obligate school districts to offer the course in high schools if the 15-student threshold is met.

“If a certain number of students request it, yes, they must do it. I don’t think if a group gets together and says, ‘Yes, we want to do this,’ the school system should have to say, ‘No, you can’t,’” Estes said.

Chisum also referred to a separate State Board of Education rule requiring school districts to offer courses if requested by 10 students.

But Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, an acknowledged expert on public education issues, said the mandatory provisions of the bill were removed before it passed.

“It’s totally permissive,” Hochberg said. “There is no course requirement. Under the rules of legislative construction, I don’t know any other way to read it.”

So, why is there a conflict that TEA thinks they need Abbott’s intervention for? According to Hochberg, it’s a cut-and-dry issue.

Evidently, it is all in the wording in the bill:

The bill says school districts “may” offer the course to high school students. But the word “shall” shows up in another section.

I suspect that the AG will rule on the side of making school districts offer the bible classes since, after all, he has a right-wing base to appeal to. I also suspect he’ll partially throw things back in the lap of the Legislature and tell them to fix the wording next time around.

Representative Mike Villarreal is scheduled to testify before the Texas House Economic Development Committee on Thursday, March 13 about the importance of including support for small business entrepreneurs in the state’s economic development strategy.

Rep. Villarreal will be joined by Ted Terrazas, a San Antonio business owner who was turned away from traditional banks before receiving a loan from a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) and building a company that now employs hundreds of workers.  The state’s current economic development strategy is focused on attracting large out-of-state businesses through the Texas Enterprise Fund. Rep. Villarreal recommends expanding access to capital for start-up entrepreneurs such as Ted Terrazas either through direct assistance or loan-loss support for CDFIs.

Rep. Villarreal outlined his views and the story of Ted Terrazas in a recent San Antonio Express-News op-ed entitled “Small Business Needs State Help, Too.”

The hearing will be held in Room E1.014 of the State Capitol at 11:00 on March 13.

More than 100 school districts have changed their minds and dropped out of Texas’ new merit pay plan for teachers – leaving just a third of the districts in the state to help launch the $148 million program next year.

While the Dallas Morning news says that “financial concerns” are the reason many ISDs are dropping out, I think we all know the real reason: Texas school districts realize that merit-based pay is a bad idea for educators.

The second reason, financially-based, is that most schools are smart enough to realize that any Republican-backed scheme like this will soon become an unfunded mandate. Although the Legislature appropriated funds for the program in this biennium, there is no guarantee that the state funding will be there in the future. Realizing this, schools are saying, “thanks, but no thanks,” because they don’t want to be stuck with hefty bills for a program of debatable merit in the future.

House Elections Chairman Leo Berman, R-Tyler said he plans to ask Attorney General Greg Abbott to respond to allegations of partisan favoritism presented to his committee by Gerald Hebert, head of litigation at the Campaign Legal Center.

Gerry Hebert gave great testimony before the House Elections Committee last Friday as the Committee held hearings on its interim charges related to Voter ID:

Hebert complained to Berman’s committee last week that Abbott has prosecuted Texans “who appear to have done little more than mistakenly help senior citizens by delivering already completed and sealed ballots to the post office or an elections administrative office.”

Of 13 voter fraud-related indictments, virtually all are African Americans or Hispanic senior citizens, Hebert noted.

He told the committee: “What is especially troubling is that while Greg Abbott’s office has prosecuted minority seniors for simply mailing ballots, he has not prosecuted anyone on the other side of the aisle for what appear to be open and shut cases of real voter fraud.”

Hebert told the committee about alleged voter fraud in heavily Republican Highland Park involving the mishandling of over 100 ballots and a memo from local prosecutors calling on Abbott to investigate the 2005 complaint. He explained that the attorney general’s office handed off the complaint to the Texas secretary of state “for evaluation of as potential criminal prosecution.”

He called that “a stalling tactic” because it is the AG’s office that evaluates criminal prosecution.

Of course, as of yesterday, the AG’s office hadn’t received any request from Berman’s office to actually act upon (no surprise). If the AG ever gets the Berman request, and assuming they respond (they claim they will, when they get the request), I’m sure the AG’s office will simply deny the charges.

Witness List

STATE OFFICES

Office of the Attorney General for the State of Texas
Eric Nichols, Deputy Attorney General for Criminal Justice

The State Auditors Office for the State of Texas
Kels Farmer, CISA (Project Manager)

Office of the Secretary of State for the State of Texas
Ann McGeehan, Director of Elections
Jay Dyer, General Counsel
Elisabeth Hanshaw Winn, Director, Legal Division

Texas Department of Public Safety
Kim Smith, Deputy Administrator of the Driver License Division
Dale Stobaugh,  HQ Section Manager, Questioned Document Section, DPS Crime Lab

COUNTY OFFICES

Bruce Sherbet, Dallas County Elections Administrator

Steve Raborn, Tarrant County Elections Administrator

Jacque Callanen, Bexar County Elections Administrator

Don Alexander, Denton County Elections Administrator

Paul Bettencourt, Harris County Tax-Assessor and Collector

George Hammerlein, Office of Harris County Tax-Assessor and Collector

Dana Debeauvoir, Travis County Clerk

Joy Streeter, Comal County Clerk

Karen McQueen, Brazos County Clerk

Dennis Gonzales, Starr County Clerk

Expert Witnesses

Amanda Fredriksen, AARP

Bryson Smith, Coalition of Texans with Disabilities

David Becker, Senior Litigation Counsel, People for the American Way

Luis Figueroa, Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund

Luis Vera, LULAC

Mary Finch, League of Women Voters

Suzi Paynter, Christian Life Commission

Dr. Chandler Davidson, Professor Emeritus, Tsanoff Chair of Public Affairs, Rice University

Dr. Gerald Hebert, Executive Director, Campaign Legal Center

Justin Levitt, Counsel, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

Dr. Toby Moore, Project Manager, Center for Democracy and Election Management, American University

Tova Wang, Democracy Fellow, The Century Foundation

David Muhlhausen, PH. D., The Heritage Foundation

Jon Taylor, PH. D., University of St. Thomas

John Colyandro, Texas Conservative Coalition

Tina Benkiser, Republican Party Chair

Boyd Richie, Democratic Party Chair

Eric Opiela, Opiela Booth PLLC

Skipper Wallace, Texas Republican County Chairman’s Association

The committee will hear invited testimony on the following charge:

Examine the prevalence of fraud in Texas elections, considering prosecution rates and measures for prevention.  Study ne  laws in other states regarding voter identification, and recommend statutory changes necessary to ensure that only eligible voters can vote in Texas elections. Specifically study the Texas mail-in ballot system, the provisional voting system, and the various processes for maintaining voter lists of ineligible voters.

We’re awaiting a formal list of who has been invited to speak, but we hear voter ID advocate Paul Bettencourt, the Harris County Tax Assessor/Collector will speak.

Nor surprisingly, Abbott sided with Craddick. In short, Abbott ruled that the Speaker is a statewide officer and is thus subject to impeachment under Article XV, Section 7 of the Texas Constitution.

However, Abbott did rule that “impeachment is not the only way to remove a speaker,” pursuant to “expulsion” under Article III, Section 11 of the Texas Constitution or “exclusion” under Article XVI, Section 2 of the Texas Constitution, as well as other remedies availiable under Section 665.007 of the Texas Government Code. Of course, Abbott doesn’t say what those other remedies are, but does include this incredible misinterpretation of the state constitution:

If the Speaker were impeached, the Texas Constitution allows the impeachment judgment to extend to, but need not include, removal from office or disqualification from holding office. And if the Speaker were legally removed from office, article III, section 9(b) of the Texas Constitution-on its face-neither requires nor precludes the election of a new Speaker by the House.

Thus, Abbott totally emasculates even the remedy of impeachment by coming to the astonishing conclusion that the Constitution does not require the election of a new Speaker by the House if the speaker were to be impeached. That’s not only a misinterpretation of the constitution, it’s simply unreasonable. However, it does provide an out for Craddick, were he to remain speaker and be impeached: since a new election isn’t required by Abbott’s twisted interpretation of the constitution, Craddick’s hand-picked Speaker Pro Tem could simply fall into the Speaker’s chair. Of course, a true constitutional crisis would no doubt erupt were this provision of Abbott’s opinion ever be used.

A true travesty.

Tags: Tom+Craddick, Greg+Abbott

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